This time he appeared neither in a hurry nor yet anxious.  He did not pause in order to glance to right or left, but started to walk quite leisurely up the street.  The two sleuth-hounds quietly followed him.  Through the darkness they could only vaguely see his silhouette, with the great bundle under his arm.  Whatever may have been Rateau’s fears of being shadowed awhile ago, he certainly seemed free of them now.  He sauntered along, whistling a tune, down the Montagne Ste. Genevieve to the Place Maubert, and thence straight towards the river.

Having reached the bank, he turned off to his left, sauntered past the Ecole de Medecine and went across the Petit Pont, then through the New Market, along the Quai des Orfevres.  Here he made a halt, and for awhile looked over the embankment at the river and then round about him, as if in search of something.  But presently he appeared to make up his mind, and continued his leisurely walk as far as the Pont Neuf, where he turned sharply off to his right, still whistling, Tournefort and Chauvelin hard upon his heels.

“That whistling is getting on my nerves,” muttered Tournefort irritably; “and I haven’t heard the ruffian’s churchyard cough since he walked out of the ‘Bon Copain.’”

Strangely enough, it was this remark of Tournefort’s which gave Chauvelin the first inkling of something strange and, to him, positively awesome.  Tournefort, who walked close beside him, heard him suddenly mutter a fierce exclamation.

“Name of a dog!”

“What is it, citizen?” queried Tournefort, awed by this sudden outburst on the part of a man whose icy calmness had become proverbial throughout the Committee.

“Sound the alarm, citizen!” cried Chauvelin in response.  “Or, by Satan, he’ll escape us again!”

“But—­” stammered Tournefort in utter bewilderment, while, with fingers that trembled somewhat, he fumbled for his whistle.

“We shall want all the help we can,” retorted Chauvelin roughly.  “For, unless I am much mistaken, there’s more noble quarry here than even I could dare to hope!”

Rateau in the meanwhile had quietly lolled up to the parapet on the right-hand side of the bridge, and Tournefort, who was watching him with intense keenness, still marvelled why citizen Chauvelin had suddenly become so strangely excited.  Rateau was merely lolling against the parapet, like a man who has not a care in the world.  He had placed his bundle on the stone ledge beside him.  Here he waited a moment or two, until one of the small craft upon the river loomed out of the darkness immediately below the bridge.  Then he picked up the bundle and threw it straight into the boat.  At that same moment Tournefort had the whistle to his lips.  A shrill, sharp sound rang out through the gloom.

“The boat, citizen Tournefort, the boat!” cried Chauvelin.  “There are plenty of us here to deal with the man.”

Immediately, from the quays, the streets, the bridges, dark figures emerged out of the darkness and hurried to the spot.  Some reached the bridgehead even as Rateau made a dart forward, and two men were upon him before he succeeded in running very far.  Others had scrambled down the embankment and were shouting to some unseen boatman to “halt, in the name of the people!”